Staging Area

Last Saturday, the first day of Spring 2010, sixteen of us from our DoLife Kayaking group braved an exhausting yet exhilarating kayaking expedition hunting for “Massy”, our legendary Lacamas Lake Monster.

A Careful Departure

Beginners and Experts

Kix

No one reported actually seeing the monster, though one weary paddler, who preferred to remain anonymous, reported seeing a “large” shadow moving under one of our explorer’s kayak while crossing the Lacamas Creek “Pit”, a mysterious 310-foot deep fissure popular with local Bass fisherman. I have always wondered about that pit.

Mark and Annie

Our group is comprised roughly of half experienced and half beginning kayakers, with ages ranging from twenty years old to around sixty, with an average age around fifty I think – I will let you guess who belongs to what age. Needless to say, there was a shortage of off-the-shelf painkillers later that evening in the greater Vancouver, Washington area.

Ron

Up the Creak

We departed in the morning from Heritage Park, and returned about three hours later.

Watcher

The weather was more than cooperative for that time of year in the Northwest, a high of 70-degrees, mostly blue sky, with a moderate-but-burdensome East wind for our laborious return leg, providing just enough punishment to help remind everyone to ask me to teach them how to avoid most of the headwind in the future.

A couple of our new kayakers had some trouble in the beginning learning how to paddle efficiently. I admonished one of them to forget all the helpful advice she had received — which was all excellent instruction by the way, and just do what felt right. That little bit o’ barnyard wisdom produced big results and a little smile. A while later I suggested to our budding kayaker, that she should probably correct her heading before she drifted off course, not after, as she was able to keep up with us okay, but was paddling twice the distance as everyone else because of the random zigzag course she piloted. She paddled like an expert for the rest of the day.

There was only one spill, which considering the nature of the sport, and how we go about it, is surprisingly rare. I won’t tell you who he was, but he is married to my youngest daughter. He was caught by the same thing I had warned everyone about three hours earlier, and as it happens, the same thing that nearly spilled Kix and I three weeks earlier. You have to watch out for shallow water. If you are moving at a good pace, and your kayak strikes a snag or a ledge in shallow water at a very slight angle, it can pry you up and over. Well, as if reenacting my short lecture, Mark — oops, sorry, I didn’t mean to mention his name — well, he did just that. He had slowed down, but ran aground, and while attempting to free himself, fell into a deep shelf and rolled over into the water. We both smiled at that.

In the end, everyone survived. Everyone had a great time. Everyone is eager to try it again.

Dear Governor Palin,

History shows it can sometimes be impossible to keep politics and bias out of science. Sir Isaac Newton was popular with his contemporaries, yet he once nearly lost his head because his ideas collided with the politics of a few important people. However, that collision sparked the “Scientific Method”, a smart effective tool to promote transparency and honesty.

Given the plethora of media channels we have today, we have an unprecedented opportunity to make “pop” science more transparent and honest. To list just a few: stream real-time data for everyone to see and verify – no lost emails or falsified data. Create “hyper-forums” to scrutinize scientific proposals, grants, findings, etc. We place the burden on the publisher to communicate ideas in compelling ways and empower the tax payer to provide balance, and help separate the sense from the nonsense.

I can provide more detailed examples if you want.

[Sincerely,

Ron Sheely]

Avatar was entertaining, yet disappointing. James Cameron spent ten years writing and developing the story. It had the makings of a great novel, on the scale of Lord of The Rings, or perhaps Dune. It was very much like Dances With Wolves — an outsider, against all odds, bonds with an indigenous tribe, and is forced to make loyalty decisions pitted against his conscience and his own people/country. James Cameron ruined the plot with political correctness in not one, but two ways. First, he made the obvious yet banal connection with the “evil” corporation verses the “true” and “pure” Rain Forest and the “noble savage”, making the Rain Forest a living character in the story. Second, he connected the “noble” terrorists with the uncivilized imperialists. Regardless of political leanings, I think any of these themes can make for a good story, but mixing the three in the way he did, while ignoring more important threads running through the story, he made it predictable and banal. In a nutshell, Hollywood ruined what could have been great. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the movie, yet it was what I expected. I still recommend seeing it, though I will probably not purchase the DVD.

Thank you Lord Jesus for your loving healing mercy, for being Who You Are, the Father of mercies, the blessed Creator of heaven and earth, the Author and Finisher of our faith, the Guardian of our souls, for knowing us before the foundation of the world.

You … are … Lord.

Today is Joyce and my 38th wedding anniversary. Our wedding was late in the evening. We got into our little ’67′ red Volkswagen ‘Bug’ and drove away to our new home in San Luis Obispo, 500 miles away. We never looked back. I was an engineering student at Cal Poly. Joyce worked long late hours as a gas station attendant. We had each other, a couple hundred dollars, and an uncompromising love for the Lord Jesus. I nearly died that year from an undiagnosed heart condition. Surgery lasted almost six hours. We had no money. The doctors and the hospital did what they could, but the Crippled Children’s Association offered to pay for the bulk, because at 20-years old, I was a legal child in California, yet Joyce at 18-years, was a legal adult. Joyce became my legal guardian. She wore pigtails at the time, and the staff at the hospital thought she was my 15-year old sister. Sister Bertha, the head nurse (it was a Catholic hospital in Los Angeles) was mortified after discovering Joyce was my wife, not my sister, and apologized profusely, because during intensive care, she had not been granted the visiting privileges of a wife.

For our first wedding anniversary, we walked into a gift store and “pointed” to the anniversary cards we would give to each other if we had the money to spare. That has been a tradition ever since.

After graduating from Cal Poly, I worked on the Space Shuttle. Joyce and I could not have children. We had a little girl, Jenee, 4-1/2 year old, our legal ward. She was in our home for 2-1/2 years, and was, for all intents and purposes, our daughter. We were in the process of legal adoption when we suddenly lost custody of her. It was indescribably painful, like a shark taking a piece from you that would never heal. Joyce and I cried ourselves to sleep for months. One day, soon after losing Jenee, the Lord whispered to my heart, confirming that we would have children. Joyce had been diagnosed infertile, yet with unflinching conviction, I told Joyce she was either pregnant or would soon be. I did not know at the time, that the Lord had similarly “spoken” to Joyce during a women’s group prayer meeting, that she would be supernaturally healed, and to “rejoice,” because she would be a mother of daughters. Karyn Rejoyce Sheely (the misspelling was our play on words) was born nine months later, followed by Kristin Praise Sheely, followed by Anne Mercy Sheely.

During our 38 years together, the Lord has many times revealed Himself to Joyce and I in wonderful and undeniable ways, sometimes dramatic, sometimes subtle, sometimes joyful or humorous, other times quite the opposite. Yet, every time He “whispered”, the resulting faith and conviction clung to our hearts like a vice.

I would not trade our life for anything.

-Ron

Last night I received some distressing news. My 80-year old Dad was riding his trick bike with the teenagers in the bike-skateboard “pit”, something I have been scolding him about for years now. He apparently made a bad turn on his “third” run – he says he can’t remember what happened after that, but vaguely remembers the kind woman who drove (raced) his bleeding body (and his busted bike) to the ER.

He also remembers the surgeons laughing when they found out what had happened. He broke several bones in his face, including his right cheek and orbital (socket) – my dad says helmets are for sissy’s. His broken trifocals had to be “removed” from his face. One eye swollen shut, contusions and road rash everywhere, broken and bruised ribs, busted hand, toe, chin, and basically everything that should have had pads, but didn’t, is pretty bruised. He was such an uncooperative patient, they sent him home after seven hours in the ER. Apparently everyone but my mom, sister Annette, and brother-in-law Kip ,were laughing. I spoke with my dad last night, and prayed for him over the telephone, which he actually sat down for – what a shock. I spoke with him again late this morning. He is doing well. My youngest sister Janet, our irresponsible-yet-lovable United flight attendant (who reminds me of a certain unnamed person in my marketing department) is helping him shop for a new BMX bike. I tried to get him to add a helmet to his shopping list, but apparently his hearing has been affected as well. Oh well.

When Kix, my Australian Shepherd, was nine weeks old, we kayaked together one evening up Lacamas Creek, near Vancouver, Washington. He wore a bright yellow dogie life jacket, a PFD, if you prefer, and despite being the smallest one I could find, it barely left a tiny black nose and gray bobbed tail, fore and aft respectively. The manufacturer had thoughtfully sewn a black web handle on top, so when I carried him, he looked more like a lunch box than a dog. There was also a ‘D’ ring next to the handle where I attached his leash.

This was his fourth trip with me since his first at seven weeks, which I think is why he was acting over confident when he stepped out of the boat a little too far from shore. He splashed headfirst before I could grab him, curing his over-confidence instantly — which if you know anything about Australian Shepherds, is not an easy accomplishment. I reeled him in, and he shivered and whimpered in my lap for the

next half hour, “nursing” on puppy kibble, until he fell sound asleep.

Parts of Lacamas Creek look like the film set of Creature from the Black Lagoon, especially in the failing light. On the return leg, the Sun had already set, but it was still light enough to read large print. A black Cormorant swam lazily in front of me. It was a perfect evening.

The Bass get aggressive that time in the evening, and often attack the hull of my boat. They are good-sized fish, and I don’t know if it is just my boat they don’t like, or if perhaps it looks to them to be a large fish, but they began striking me from underneath as they often did. I was pondering just how big those fish might be, and if they had posed a threat for Kix when he took his first unscheduled swimming lesson in that very spot an hour earlier. My thoughts turned to the Cormorant, just crossing my bow, a boat-length away.

POW-SPLASH, FEATHERS and SCALES … the bird was gone!

I couldn’t believe what I saw. A large Bass¹ — I don’t know how big, swallowed the Cormorant whole. Just how big and how old would a Bass had to have been to be able to swallow a bird that size? And how would my answer sound to the person who asked what I used for bait, if I had reeled in something more than Kix an hour earlier?

1. Some have suggested this fish was likely not a Bass, but possibly a Tiger Muskie.